


This Place (It's Haunted Without You)

by blackorchids



Category: Still Star-Crossed (All Media Types), Still Star-Crossed (TV), Still Star-Crossed - Melinda Taub
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Camping, Domestic Fluff, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Kid Fic, Post Episode: s01e04 Pluck Out the Heart of My Mystery, Slow Burn, baby fever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 17:52:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11445987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackorchids/pseuds/blackorchids
Summary: It's possible that Benvolio has thought about what Rosaline's hypothetical future children might look like, but it was only for a second, because he still doesn't like her. Truly.





	This Place (It's Haunted Without You)

**Author's Note:**

> title from the movie dear john's soundtrack, called little house

“The house was to be gifted to myself and my husband,” Rosaline says quietly, after they’ve made camp and are stubbornly pretending they’ll get sufficient rest shivering on the unforgiving ground. “And when my parents died, the idea was that my sister would marry a man who loved her, and who was wealthy enough to free us both from my aunt’s clutches.”

One of the horses nearby nickers and shuffles a bit along the lead they’d tied snug around a low-hanging branch, and Benvolio is saved from having to decide how to respond when she sighs heavily and turns over so that she is facing him once more, eyes hooded and watching him warily.

“Of course, I suppose your uncle is wealthy enough to rescue my sister as well as myself,” she jokes weakly, and Benvolio, masterful liar that he is, cannot help the way his face wrinkles up at the mere thought--at the sheer audacity of his uncle offering himself up for marriage in Benvolio’s stead. The idea is repulsive at best, not in the least because of the age difference.

“I realize it’s not as stately as either the Capulet grounds or the Montague manors, but it’s really quite beautiful, in morning light, with fresh linen drapes, and the sounds of a happy family.” Rosaline continues, her voice small and yet still so wonderfully defiant, as though she is daring him to mock her dead father’s home.

As though he would, when they’re laying an arms width apart, and she is looking so soft in the dying fire and almost ethereal under the bright silver of the moon.

Rosaline seems to realize he’s not going to say anything, negative or otherwise, because she closes her eyes, humming for just a moment, before continuing to describe her favorite rooms and fond memories in each of them. It is almost as though she has forgotten they do not get along: almost as though she has forgotten he is there at all, vulnerable as she appears.

He wonders if she’s ever discussed any of it, with even her sister, though the answer comes to him nearly straight after the first thought. Rosaline would not have wanted to show weakness to the world, and she would have wanted to be strong for her kid sister.

Her voice is slowly descending into a mumble, words coming fewer and far between as she falls asleep with that same sad smile on her face, but he doesn’t need her to continue speaking for his imagination to run rampant.

He thinks about the rooms he passed when he stepped inside the silent building, intent on finding where she’d hidden herself away. Pictures the study in all of it’s masculine glory, a fresh oak desk in front of a window no longer boarded up. Thinks about how the colors of the walls have faded and yellowed in their age and with no one there to care for them, wonders what colors they used to be, what colors Rosaline would fight for them to be now.

He recalls her mention of fresh linens for the windows, thinks about how they would look fluttering in the summer breeze, whether drawing them shut against the heat of the sun would do much to cool the rooms when the windows are so large. There had been a great many arches in the house, and the ceilings of most of the common rooms had been slightly domed, a more subtle display of wealth than Benvolio is necessarily used to from either House Capulet or his own family. The kitchen had been open, and Benvolio recalls that Rosaline and her sister had been of nobility when they were children, but he imagines that their mother had cooked as many meals as their servants, wonders what kind of a man their father had been, to have raised such outspoken, headstrong ladies.

Imagines how the pair of them must have been when they were young, running through the halls and around the massive table with their cousin Juliet and, if Rosaline is to be believed, and he thinks she is telling the truth, the crown princess, Isabella.

Cannot help himself as he thinks of any children Rosaline has, as well-educated and opinionated as their mother, running through the house, screaming laughter ringing behind them. Wonders what they’ll look like, if they’ll get his jaw and her eyes, the famed Montague height or the renowned Capulet beauty.

Rosaline snuffles in her sleep and draws his cloak closer to her face, forehead crinkling and then smoothing out just as quickly. Benvolio’s heart is pounding hard, as though he’d just run the distance from their city of Verona to their campsite, instead of riding.

There will be no Montague-Capulet children running amuck in Rosaline’s father’s empty house, because she planned on retiring to an abbey, last he’d heard, and they do not like one another, current teamwork aside.

Benvolio turns to lay on his back, one arm bent and behind his head, and he stares at the stars and recalls that Romeo had written a fair few sonnets comparing both Rosaline and Juliet to them. Is newly curious about how Rosaline and Romeo had even met, though he’d never ask the Capulet and his cousin is no longer there to tell him.

He lets his eyes slide shut, his body, aching from sitting in a saddle for more than a day, all but melting into the sparse grass. Their campfire is now a few bright red embers, and Benvolio can feel sleep creeping up on him quite gently, considering the circumstances. Rosaline snuffles again, more quietly, and breathes out, like she’s sighing in her dreams in the same exasperated way she does when she’s awake. He blindly reaches out an arm to graze his fingers over her shoulder, feels the last vestiges of his consciousness slip away from him just as he remembers that final room he’d passed before discovering Rosaline in the eating room:

A nursery, hauntingly abandoned, just waiting to be reimagined and refilled with squirmy, wide-eyed, happy little babes.

**Author's Note:**

> still super bummed about this show getting cancelled, still gonna deal with it by writing indulgent fanfic
> 
> come talk to me about the show or leave a prompt on tumblr [@ rosalinesbenvolio](http://www.rosalinesbenvolio.tumblr.com)!


End file.
